Happy Endings
by quantumsilver
Summary: Because Voyager is made for them. Alternate ending to "Night". Janeway's alone in the void.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: **This is for Froot, for her donation to the Queensland Flood Relief. She requested an alt. ending to Night where Janeway goes through with her decision to remain in the void…with the stipulation of no magic rainbows. I took it and ran with it. Thanks especially to my beta, Cheshire, and Gatesy for her stardate conversion aid. They both put up with you don't want to know what kind of aggravation from me.

If you want anything like what the title promises…wrong place, sorry…but you can probably just about get there if you skip the epilogue. In spite of that…I still stand by it. ;)

**Disclaimer: **Much as it pains me, they aren't mine and I make no money from this...but this time, charity did :D

**TIMING:** The time frame of the story spans about fifteen months...from January 31, 2375 _(52084.88) _until May 20, 2376 _(53382.51)_. Figure about two - three months between chapters. The last two chapters occur on the same day (May 20th, 2376), which is important to note. 

**Happy Endings**

* * *

_Not every story has a happy ending, Goldenbird. It would be wonderful if they all did. But that's not the way the universe works, sometimes._

"Kathryn, for God's sake, _don't do this_." If he's ever resorted to out and out begging her to heed his counsel, it's right now. "There's still time to get back!"

"I'm sorry, Chakotay." It's a lie. This isn't, "But this is something I have to do."

"Kath_ryn_–!" he chokes on his desperation because he sees her determination now, the way he hadn't on the bridge.

"I'll be _fine_," she assures him with deathly calm. The sting in her eyes is from the odd atmosphere in this damned void while she tries to memorize the lines of his face one last time. With the smallest, oddly serene smile, she imparts one final order to him.

"Get my ship home, Commander."

She fires the torpedoes she'd preprogrammed to the appropriate yield, and within seconds, Chakotay's desperate face fizzles, snaps, disappears. The link has been cut by the implosion of the vortex. Voyager, and the damaged Malon freighter, are gone.

She's alone. Alone in silence.

When she was six years old, she'd stumbled into her father's holo-reading of Old Yeller. To this day, she remembers how thrilled she'd been with herself for cracking his desk drawer code – her birthday, incidentally. She'd immediately curled up under his desk to enjoy her hijacked contraband. It was her first adult holo-reading. The tiny display had popped up quite compliantly at the press of her little thumb on the forbidden activator, the story had begun, and she'd giggled to herself in pure glee. There was no reward better than a new book, in Kathryn Janeway's esteemed six-year-old opinion…and it looked like Daddy had been holding out on her.

By the time he'd found her at the story's end, she'd been in tears. Utterly devastated. She couldn't believe anyone would write such a story. About a _dog_, of all lovable creatures! It had been a sin, as far as she was concerned. Despondent, she'd sobbed and sobbed in his patient arms, and once calmed enough to breathe, she'd histrionically sworn her life was never going to be the same for it. In some ways, her six-year-old self had been right about that.

She knows now that the book had been a gift to him from Gretchen; hence he'd kept it in his desk with other precious keepsakes. The book now belongs to Kathryn, though she still finds it too painful to read. She cherishes the small keepsake, protects it as he had because it reminds her of him – she doesn't want to think about the book now, however, because she knows full well she'll never see it again.

Nevertheless, as she stares at the ripple in space created by the imploded vortex, Kathryn can't help but be reminded of her father's honest words to her when he'd found her under his desk all those years ago.

Not every story has a happy ending. She knows that now, she understands that. But this story does. Because Voyager is safely on her way home, free of the Malon, and out of this God-forsaken void. At least two years closer to home.

Of course she will be more than three years behind them now. Years spent in darkness. Alone. With plenty of time to think about the decisions that have led her here.

She won't wallow; she'll refuse to do that. Some things are worth dying for. Ensuring Voyager's safety is certainly one of them. She's happy with this decision. She knows it's right. That knowledge will sustain her through all the dark, lonely years to come.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **see chapter one.

* * *

_Captain's log, stardate five two one one five mark four. Starfleet has one more ally from within the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant. With the departure of my Void friends, the UrUrans, as they call themselves, I'm proceeding onward on my course toward the Alpha Quadrant. They've directed me to another shortcut within the rift. I now have exactly twenty-seven months of travel left through the void – instead of the thirty-six I'd been expecting. Unfortunately, it also means no more contact with other living creatures for the duration of my journey. Their territory ended once I entered the small wormhole. _

_They wanted to do more, but with their collective failing health, it was the best they could offer. They did boost my energy reserves by the small margin their incompatible fuel sources would allow, and I can now afford to tint alternate vistas onto the viewports. The view beyond them however remains…bleak. As does the view from within. _

Stir crazy doesn't begin to cover it.

The fucking shuttle is tiny. There's no other phrase for it with a length of eight point five meters, broken up in the internal structure into two rooms, the flight deck and the cabin. The joke of a cabin. Several rows of classic bunkbeds that don't allow her to shift properly or curl up in sleep, the way her bed on Voyager did. She'd forgotten how cramped they were. Every time she tries to turn over she hits something – usually her damned elbow. Three times now. She's tried sleeping on the top. Tried sleeping on the bottom. The temptation to pull one of the mattresses into the back of the flight deck grows.

It would help perhaps if she wasn't crawling. But the maximum speed being warp four isn't conducive to that. In the unfolding silence, days, hours are no longer contemplative. They're torture. There's no sound but the steady beeps of sensors and automated alerts…to falling energy reserves. She'll have to stop with the music soon. That shrill sound of warning grates on her nerves lately, but she needs to know every drop of energy that's used, needs to keep on top of how much power she's blowing through at any given time. But without music…

She suppresses a shudder.

There hadn't been time to collect her things. She'd barely snuck out of the ship unnoticed to begin with. Helped to have the captain's clearance level of course, when launching an unauthorized shuttle and concealing it from their own sensors. Even in her haste, she'd necessarily had the presence of mind to transfer all command codes to the new captain of Voyager…in case he somehow needed them immediately on the other side of the severed rift.

There'd been no time for goodbyes, no time for letters. No time to collect her lucky teacup, and Dante sat out on her bedside stand where she'd left it. The photo of Mark and Molly rests securely in her locked desk back in her – her _old_ quarters. They belong to Chakotay now. She wonders how long it will take him to pack them, and laments having left it for him to have to do.

She used to wonder how long it took Mark. The parallels are rather uncanny…and the pit in her stomach that forms from those musings is pretty much her constant companion nowadays. That…and the silence.

Silence is daunting, after so many weeks of it. In ways she'd never quite grasped. Passing out of comm. range of her newly made, unfortunately dying friends has been the reality check of the century. There's nothing to _do_. She does have the database of literature in the shuttle's computer core. It's not nearly as extensive as the one on Voyager. And her personal collection…she sorely misses that.

Her clothes. She was relegated to the few items she'd let herself replicate once aboard. But there'd been no time for a store of energy reserves, either; she'd had minutes to get down to the shuttlebay and launch it before someone noticed and tried to stop her. Having calculated reserves and weighing them against needs and comforts…comforts are coming up lacking. She's replicated two more uniforms. One pair of comfortable sweats. The one pair of boots she'd been wearing will suffice. She stopped wearing them on day three of passing through the short cut, however. It seemed silly after a short while. What's the point? She isn't entertaining guests in the near future. Or even the far future. For now, the carpets clean themselves as a feature of the environmental systems, and there was no dirt in here to begin with. The atmosphere is sealed. The only dirt or dust will be of her own making. It's not like she has a dog shedding all over the place or anything – she _will_ persist in missing Molly with every pore and follicle of her being. Even now, four years later…

God. If missing Molly like this is anything like missing a child…how is her mother doing it? She shudders to think what would have happened if she'd gotten another dog while in the Delta Quadrant…not that she hadn't been tempted over their travels by a cute, furry face here and there – ad nauseam, truthfully. Steel-facing her way through the cold refusal of Q's little gift…that had been one of the better performances she'd ever put on.

It makes her think of her mother, oddly, missing Molly. Her father, too. Between her parents, Edward was always the real dog lover of the two of them. Sometimes, Kathryn honestly believes Gretchen only ever tolerated, let herself be owned by dogs because her husband, and then her daughters, loved them. When Kathryn had whispered the suspicion to her younger sibling over twenty years ago, Phoebe had gone all introspective artist on her, chewing her full lower lip with ever-widening eyes upon realizing the probable truth of that scandalous fact.

It's all right, of course. Mom can't help it if she lacks the dog appreciation gene. No one among the other three Janeways had ever held it against her…

Much.

Kathryn hadn't quite understood how Edward Janeway could have loved her mother unconditionally enough to accept this about her until Justin, however. Then she'd gotten it…even if Phoebe hadn't.

Had she, by now? Had someone come along to demonstrate the benefit of sacrifice, compromise to her sister? Phoebe hadn't had the chance to send a letter through. Or if she had, it'd been lost. Her sister has always leaned far to the pain in the ass side of the spectrum. Which makes the growing ache of missing her somewhat baffling on the surface. _But that's sisters, for you_, Kathryn muses to herself with the tiniest of smiles.

And her mother. She'd been looking forward to seeing her mother again. No matter how old you get, how many command decisions you make without batting an eyelash for others, there's nothing like a mother's nurturing to fall back on after the toughest days, she thinks now. It was something she'd not realized until more recently out here. Until it wasn't an option.

Now, there will only be the letters she'd begun recording soon after Voyager had gotten stuck out here to begin with – soon after _she'd_ stranded them all out here. But then…there are members of her crew, over forty in fact, who will never again be able to have that privilege either. So why should she?

It hardens her. She squares her shoulders, stops feeling sorry for herself. She made this choice. And if the silence keeps pressing in on her, adding layers to her usually light-weight captain's uniform, there is some small consolation in knowing that she had collected every personal letter written by the latter members and made surethey were sent through the data stream back to Earth. They would find their way to those who'd been intended to read them. At least that she had done for them.

She knows Chakotay will send hers through, too. He's good like that. He's a good man. The galaxy needs men like him. Men of principle. Of honor. A man not so blinded by those principles that he tends to get lost in absolute adherence to archaic directives never meant for their situation. Not like her.

She has, in her heart of hearts, a certain nagging suspicion that he will get Voyager home faster than she would have. He may do things she would not have. He won't risk the ship, but he abandoned many of his Starfleet principles when he joined the Maquis.

She has, in her heart of hearts, maybe always feared him for that. In some secret, closeted part of her that it no longer matters if she examines. The man has a certain inborn charisma. He draws people to him without effort. She directly observed it that first day he'd beamed over to her bridge. For months and months afterwards. She had never been personally immune to it, either…never completely.

Once he fully trusted her to lead the ship, to treat his portion of the crew as fairly as her own, she'd eventually noted a certain muting of that natural influence he has over others. Not enough to negate his being damned good at his job, but enough that it never overshadows her own – never draws more loyalty and admiration than she does – _did_.

She'd noted it. She wasn't so far up her own responsibilities that things like that escaped her notice indefinitely. In the back of her mind, she has always suspected he did that deliberately. Now, in nothing but silence and absence of his influence, the distractions of the crew and ceaseless crises…she _knows_ he did.

It's been a while since she's truly questioned her ability to command her crew. To engender their loyalty, their absolute obedience. Their mostly absolute obedience. For the past six weeks, however, the last conversation she'd had with the members of her bridge crew has been playing heavily in her mind.

_Forget it. We're not going to let you die out here. _

_Have a little faith, B'Elanna. _

Faith in what? She wonders idly now. Most of her musings are idle lately. She even notes that lazily, as well. Lately, she's sleepy. Drunk with exhaustion. She knows full well she's been sleeping the majority of the days away. Only rising when the grumbling in her stomach becomes painful or her need to use the facilities is too pressing to ignore. After meeting her physical needs, she stumbles to the flight deck to check the sensors. She's always dead on course. There's never anything whatsoever to distinguish the sectors within sensor range from the space she's currently passing through.

What the hell had she been– oh. Right. B'Elanna. She misses B'Elanna. Her usual Klingon stubbornness had been in full flare on the bridge that last day.

A shrill beep sounds from the flight deck, prickling the hairs on the back of her neck as she jumps. Energy stores have fallen another half percent. In the middle of Beethoven's seventh symphony, third movement – her favorite part – she orders the computer to terminate playback.

It's settled now. No more music. She simply can't afford it. She'll have to learn to sleep in the silence.

Or she simply won't sleep. If there's even a hint of dubious quality to her thoughts regarding what not having even the mental stimulation of music will do to her sanity, she smiles grimly to herself as her mind wanders back to her own words.

_I'll have a class two shuttle. Plenty of rations. I'll survive. _

And she will, of course. Even when she doesn't want to, she always does, somehow – doesn't she?

She'll prove her dubious engineer wrong. She owes B'Elanna that much, at the very least.


	3. Chapter 3

_Captain's log, stardate five two two four one point oh nine… No contact with any living creature in weeks. No change in sensor readings, and no more radiation. No __**anything**__ as far as the sensors are concerned. No course corrections have been necessary. Energy reserves hover at just over ninety-five percent. In spite of the shortcut, calculations indicate there'll be little power left for emergencies at the current power drainage rate. As a result, I've had to cut back on everything but the basics. Food. Showers. An hour of reading a day. The inactivity and lack of movement has me gaining weight. I've begun an exercise regimen and altered my caloric intake accordingly. The routine is crucial, I'm finding. Without it, I'm not sure how easy it would be to keep hold of my sanity under these conditions. _

_As always, the silence is my only companion. _

It isn't _complete_ silence, to be fair. Truthfully, she'd never really noticed how much sound there is on board a "silent" shuttle. Most of it is vibration. The faint stirrings of the environmental control system kicking into the next cycle. The air vents doing their jobs. The sensors faintly chirruping steady results back to her, assuring her with their cooing that all is well. Relatively.

The sonic shower. Its familiar pitch as she scrunches into the tiny stall and her skin crawls for a hot bath she'll never get. Not for at least many more years. More if something goes awry and she's stuck here for longer than anticipated. Of course if that happens, and she doesn't run into anyone else in this black void of nothingness, she'll be out of power altogether.

She'll never leave. The shudders that errant thought sends through her grow stronger with each passing day.

The loneliness is criminal. Pervasive. Eternal.

As she turns over on the bunkbed she hadn't seen fit to rise from this afternoon –

"Damn it!" she swears, clutching at her elbow as sharp radiating pain shoots through her pinched elbow nerve. That's the twentieth time this week!

In the aftermath of fading stars inside of her eyelids…she sees red. That's _it_. A human being can only take so much.

Rolling fluidly off the bunk onto the floor, she rips at the thin mattress, fully intending to tear it off its bunk frame and trying, ignoring the sharp, slowly-fading throb in her elbow.

It fights her. It's meant to stay, through turbulence unholy if need be. It doesn't want to separate from the inset border of the titanium frame. It's refusing to surrender. The damned thing is deliberately being difficult.

She redoubles her efforts. It's heavy. Bending only enough to make it less cooperative than one stiff mass would be. The red goes to black as she zeroes in on her opponent. Being calm would be best, more effective, but by now she's just too pissed off, too determined to exert common sense. She fights, expending what little energy she's stockpiled these past few weeks in a flurry of fury.

This mattress is coming off. Her entire world, her reality and emotional stability, now depend on it. Her entire life out here, from the moment they entered this quadrant, has been one colossal battle for existence. This is a battle for her sanity, but it's the same principle.

"I have to…hand it…to you," she grits the admission out aloud. "You never…give up…do you?"

It never has. Cut off from her ship and crew, her family and any human contact whatsoever, it's still not satisfied. She's _still_ fighting with this damned quadrant. The way she has been from the moment they entered it. Always fighting.

In her frenzy, her outpouring of determined rage, it perhaps escapes her notice that the fight is the only thing that motivates her anymore.

Two broken nails, a litany of bitten curses of various origins, and one bitch of a cut from…_something_…later, the mattress is on the floor. She's winning this battle. Of course she is. She wins them all.

It folds and bends awkwardly, lodging itself in the too-small doorway. She grits her teeth. She's short of breath with the violence of the struggle. Alternating in sinusoidal waves of needling anger and almost detached bemusement at its tenacity, which is nothing short of sentient at this point, she crouches down behind it, folds the mattress up along its length and wedges the first edge into the door. Sits and shoves the rest of it past the door with her feet. The second the tail end of it passes through the slimmer arch, it unfolds with a great _thwop_, flattening itself out on the only truly open expanse of floor in the tiny shuttle.

Looking down on it from above, it's somewhat the worse for wear. Class Two shuttle mattresses weren't exactly built to withstand the kind of abuse she just meted out – to stay put, yes. To withstand friendly fire, definitely not. The material inside is now lumpy, the edges looking rather dimpled from being beaten in from all angles. It's defeated, and it knows it.

And a small smile lights her face: it'd be feral if not for the triumph arching it towards arrogant, instead.

"That's right," she tells it haughtily, standing over it and brushing herself off. "Next time, choose better sides. It'll go easier on you."

It suddenly occurs to her that she's talking to a mattress. For a single instant, she leaves herself, observes herself from some distant point above. Sees the ridiculousness of the past fifteen minutes of frenzied effort. The absurdity of aligning an inanimate object's motives with those of an equally inanimate quadrant.

And it's official now. She's losing it.

A shrill triple beep sounds, startling her. What the…

Reserves. They've fallen another half percent. She's one step closer to running out of power. Words, images, thoughts, swirl together in her mind.

_Have a little faith, B'Elanna. _

_Not every story has a happy ending. _

She drags a hand tiredly through her tangled hair. Suddenly exhausted from the struggle that had so spontaneously ensued. It's all she can do to stumble back into the cabin and gather up her pillows and blanket before dropping lifelessly to her now-dimpled mattress. The fading into the oblivion of sleep has long been the highlight of her days now.

In dreams, at least she has company.


	4. Chapter 4

She's abandoned her captain's logs. She's abandoned logs, period. What's the point of them? Who in the hell is ever going to listen to them?

And she's only a captain by memory now anyway. She put the pips away months ago.

Pacing is beyond a habit, beyond custom. It's now a part of her, something she does without thought. There is an actual thread pattern worn into the line of the grey carpet she normally traces. From the pilot's seat all the way back to the sonic shower. Back again. From the pilot's seat, all the way back to the sonic shower. Back again. It passes the time. Keeps her fit. Keeps her from the increasingly bizarre thoughts that permeate her senses. An hour of it and she gets dizzy from the whirling. The spots that dance in front of her eyes are from the dizziness. It keeps the unlikely ideas of the presence she keeps sensing in the cabin with her at bay.

She talks aloud now. To herself, to members of her crew that aren't here.

She talks to Chakotay most of all. Regret that she stuck him with the loneliest job in the quadrant, captaining the only Starfleet ship in it, pervades her consciousness. They might never have made it out of here if she hadn't though, and she maintains she did the right thing, for the right reasons. He argues with her, by proxy, of course – she has to take his side, too, or the argument wouldn't be fair – but she still wins.

She gives him advice she knows he doesn't need but would take with a gracious, dimpled smile, and she mothers B'Elanna too. "Make sure to keep those coils in tight alignment, Lieutenant. Two or three degrees may be within regulation, but the antimatter injectors have a higher tendency to misalign in the middle of warp flight if those coils aren't dead on specs."

B'Elanna knows all this, of course. Kathryn only worries that she'll forget without her captain – her _old_ captain – there to fall back on. And she doesn't believe in telepathy, but maybe thinking it hard enough will somehow…

She laughs at herself. It's ridiculous…she knows it. But it makes her feel better. She talks to the others, too. Because she misses them.

"Go easy on him, old friend. He might be less Starfleet about it all, but you know you can trust him to have the ship's best interests at heart – I do. Don't fight him. Be there for him. Guide him…even if he won't ask you to. He'll need you every bit as much as I did."

"Keep your shirt tucked in." She can clearly see the small blue eyes gazing up at her in concentration, in tremulous, youthful hope. "Go down with the ship. And never abandon–"

The color drains from her face and her pacing halts abruptly. That's _not_ what she's done.

"Shut up, Chakotay," she hisses out low.

He annoys the hell out of her sometimes. Just the memory of his persona, his characteristics, his likely responses to her thoughts sometimes. She aches like hell to have him get under her skin again – in person. To smell his aftershave again. To smell _anything_ that smells like Voyager. The flowers people are always bringing by her ready room. The strange, wild scents of the mess hall. The particular mix of Seven's regeneration chamber, the particular shades of green that only seem to come into existence from Borg machinery. The unique scent of dormant Vulcan pheromones. Hell she'd pay credits to smell Chell or Golwat right about now!

Or the sterile scent of sickbay, and the EMH by association. To hear him absently hum his latest operatic obsession to himself. To hear him lecture her on too much coffee, too little exercise. Her head cocks to the side. He's the one person on that whole ship that would probably be proud of her, pleased with her right about now. She chuckles to herself. "Try to hover just below the level of hubris, Doctor, as you keep growing into yourself, hmm?"

Sometimes he needs the warmest of encouragement. Sometimes he needs a peg knocking out from under him…or two. But with Seven as his humanitarian project, she's seeing peripheral growth in him by leaps and bounds.

_Was_ seeing. Was, was, _was_.

She does worry for him. For Chakotay's interest in him. And in Seven. On that token, she counts on Tom, actually, to step in and make sure the gaps are filled. He may not notice the gap in attention to the former Borg and the EMH, but his best friend will. And once he whispers his big, dark eyed concern to Tom, she knows her pilot, one of her best redemption stories aside from Seven, will step up and take charge. He has that in him, has it bred, modeled into him, whether he realizes his command potential yet or not.

She sees it, and she can count on Harry to quietly bolster it in her absence. Tom and B'Elanna have each other. So do the doctor and Seven. All of them can count on Harry…

Her heart twinges, pangs. Sweet, innocent Harry.

She'd done the best she could for him. This had been _especially_ for him. How many more wormholes was he expected to see and think would lead him home until the cruel quadrant quashed that hope, trampled it into the deckplates before he lost every last ounce of his hopeful optimism? Already, too much of that had been lost.

Which is why she keeps her secrets, some of the lessons time has taught her locked away in something more secure than a desk drawer. Which is why she fights as hard as she does to make sure they'll get back home – with or without her. This time, it simply had to be without.

_What about us? Don't we get a say?_

"Well sorry, Harry," she growls as she paces, having resumed that action when the faint murmuring had started to unnerve her. "I wasn't going to watch it happen again. Not again." She wasn't going to watch him wither away in bleak darkness. She was _not_ going to watch this quadrant beat the rest of his innocence out of him.

She hears a faint murmur. A disapproving one. Her lips tighten. She knows who that is. Would be, if he were anywhere near her right now, and privy to her thoughts. "I did what I had to, Chakotay. And now, you'll do what you have to."

Sometimes, she swears she can feel his presence. She can hear him admonishing her from the rear cabin as she picks up her coffee cup–

Oh. That. Not part of the basics, no, but she doesn't think it matters anymore. She can't live without ANY comfort whatsoever and keep her sanity. She just can't do it. Hell…is she not already talking to people who aren't here?

Chakotay is the worst, admittedly. Tuvok is a distant second, but for the most part, it's all him. She rarely even thinks his name anymore, so many of her thoughts center on him.

With good reason. Such uncharted territory, territory charted only in theory, when she couldn't clamp down on the conscious perfidy fast enough to stop herself considering it.

What were they to each other? She thinks now there's a chance she'd always been making it up. They walked such a fine line, sometimes. A line set by bigger things than them. A line set by necessity, by reason and responsibility. Hell, was there anything there besides a friendship that had been all but forced upon them by circumstance? She thinks sometimes she's recreating it now. Rewriting history, maybe, writing it the way she thinks it was…

But she's not. She halts a nanosecond in that certainty before about-facing at the sonic shower and turning back to the flight deck. It was real – the most real thing there had been out here.

In the beginning, she'd been flattered. How could she not be? The man was gorgeous, and she was a woman who was, unfortunately in this instance, not deaf, dumb or blind. He could have any woman he wanted, and that was out and out fact.

There had been disbelief when he'd told her. Her? He meant…_her_? _She_ was the one he… The flattery had come in a close second. And then she'd been downright…

Terrified. Against it, on every level of her being. It was an impossibility when he hinted, none too subtly, how he'd started to look at her. Not that she hadn't noticed the looks. The extra long stares. The too-quick aversion of his eyes when she caught him at it. But there are lies you can tell yourself that defy logic until they're confirmed, she thinks to herself wryly.

She's a master at maintaining them.

Even after they got their letters…after Mark had fired the final shot on the moral reasons to ignore the pull of that charisma…which her first officer was so capable of broadcasting or muting, to suit the situation…

When they're alone, he turns it on her more times than he even realizes. The smiles no one else ever gets from him. The ones that crinkle the corners of those deep, soulful eyes, that flash toothy grins _far_ less proper than they should be. But then…she catches herself constantly doing the same to him on a daily basis, doesn't she? She's just as guilty.

_Was_. She _was_ just as guilty.

But theirs is a relationship so much deeper than surface sexual attraction. She'd never cheapen what they are to each other by calling it that, and neither would he. Just as he'd never pushed the line even one step too far and neither had she. They both care about each other too much to do that to the other.

He frightens her. Here, where it doesn't matter, where the separation distance is great enough to make it safe, she admits that to herself.

He. Scares her. On a personal level, not a professional one. She trusts him too much for that.

It's herself she doesn't trust, always has been.

She thinks the thing is…fundamentally, they're equals. Equals in command experience, in training, in tactical knowledge and skill. She might be the more overtly dominant of the two of them, but that's only because he chooses to _let_ her be. When he feels it necessary, he pushes back at her just as hard as she does. When justified, he digs his heels in every bit as stubbornly as she does.

She wonders how many arguments between them happened simply because kissing the hell out of the other one wasn't an option. Because it never would be while they were out here. She wonders how many cutting words and calculating phrases were simply protestation of the impotent nature of a connection that wanted, raged to be so much more than it could be in a quadrant whose very nature demanded subjugation of that connection.

She wonders if any other mere friendship has been so deep that it shows in actions the way theirs does. She means the quiet things…things she got so used to she was downright spoiled before ever noticing. Coffee appearing on her desk without asking. A rose for her quarters after a close call. All nighters dealing with crew concerns that meant she didn't have to, didn't even know there'd been a problem until days later, when a junior officer commented on the situation in passing and the commander's ingenious solution. A shoulder to lean on – metaphorically speaking – at _just_ the right moment. Not a second before she was ready to talk and not a second after. _Just_ then.

Not that she didn't make it a point to reciprocate…whenever she could. A morning off if he'd been up all night, dealing with some problem of the crews he'd kept from waking her with – and she'd actually gotten wind of it in time. A gift of some exotic, colored sand for his paintings that she'd bargained for planetside and left on his coffee table when she knew he was in the mess hall. A cup of tea waiting for him after a hard day if she happened to get to dinner first, wine or brandy if it had been a nightmare of a day instead.

She thinks the reason for all of that is because they were, subconsciously, fighting like hell not to let that spark of hope die out in the other one.

Yet she'd shut him out, had forgotten all of this in the months before they met the Malon. In the instant before she'd decided to leave, all she'd thought was that he was insane if he thought that pedantic little show on the bridge was going to be enough to stop her from making sure she didn't damn them all to years in this void _on top of_ damning them to exile in the Delta Quadrant. She remembers, quite clearly, wondering if he really thought her decision to leave was nothing more than some pathetic ploy for attention, and hardening as she determined to prove to him how sorely he underestimated her motives.

Why? Why couldn't she remember that the reason he'd wanted her to stay was as personally selfish as it was genuine? Was she truly that depressed, out of her mind the way he and the doctor had so infuriatingly hinted for weeks on end? So off her proverbial rocker that all she could see was an attack on her superior autonomy, her commitment to this crew?

She'll never really know the answers to any of these questions now. Her actions have seen to that, with a finality that has been slow to sink in but merciless in doing so.

And so she talks to him, argues with him, for him. She defends her choices, staunchly if need be, and when she hears murmuring voices lately, she attributes it to him, to his presence, because his is the one she undoubtedly misses most keenly.

In the back of her mind, at least, she knows it's not him. If he were here with her, the feeling she would get would be less…sinister.

Days bleed into each other. Pacing, calisthenics, and eating are a routine she thrives on. The loneliness is passing, becoming more of an abstract concept than a reality. The voices persist. She's aware of them all the time, more with each passing day.

She knows hearing voices isn't a good sign. They may not say anything she can make out, but the growing certainty that she isn't alone in this shuttle is invading her conscious awareness with each passing moment. She feels eyes on her, and she knows it isn't possible…just as strongly as she is coming to know that someone is _definitely_ here. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle increasingly, insistently, and after weeks of it on end, she finally snaps.

"Computer, scan shuttle Cochrane."

"_Scan complete."_

"How many life forms are present aboard?"

"_One."_

"Identify."

"_Kathryn Janeway."_

She most definitely feels that presence. It isn't herself. Her head cocks in sudden epiphany.

No…

"Q!" She shouts up to the ceiling and beyond, to the unseen black ethos. "Show yourself!"

No response. She thinks she can hear faint laughter. But not his.

No. She sags slightly, her eyes hardening. Not his. This is more menacing than anything Q. This is something…sinister.

She waits. Nothing happens. She exhales slowly, her hands trailing down from her hips. And orders another coffee. Coffee will preserve her sanity better than anything.

Maybe more music is what she needs. A little Mahler never fails to lighten the mood. She ignores the shrill triple beep when it sounds twice, letting her know that twelve straight hours of it, in addition to the extra rations wasted on coffee and reading, sonicing her clothing clean, has let energy reserves fall three quarters of a percent today.

She'll have to make up for it tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5

_I believe that you are punishing me because I do not think the way you do, because I am not becoming more like you. _

"Oh, Seven. You still don't get it, do you?" She can hear those words in her head, over and over again. She can feel the twisting, churning of her innards as she gets the report that the creature has been beamed to the Hirogen vessel.

Would she ever get it? Surely there was no need for _her_ to be the one to guide Seven to the ways of humanity alone.

But then…who else would support Seven the way that she had?

"_Are you sure this is how you want to handle it? She's not like us. She's never had the values instilled in her from childhood the way we have. It may be unreasonable to expect her to think and act like us…ever, if not right away."_

"Did you not see the condition that poor creature was in? She as good as murdered him. Without a thought to its vulnerability or its lack of ability to harm us – and since when were _you_ her number one champion?"

"_You know I'm not. I just don't want to see you punish her out of emotion rather than necessity and regret it later. You don't handle guilt well."_

What the hell did he know about it? He hadn't had a real clue how she handled it – until now. Now, he might get it more fully. Now, she might, too.

He'd been trying to protect her from making a kneejerk, reactive decision that would only hurt her chances of reaching their newest crew member later. He was right. She shouldn't have gone down there quite as soon as she had. She hadn't been ready yet.

_You claim to respect my individuality, but in fact you are frightened by it._

Hit the proverbial nail on the head. Oh, how rigid her spine had gone at that cheap parting shot.

It had scared her, damn it, yes. She'd been afraid of never being able to reach the former drone, to instill a sense of true humanity in her. She'd been afraid she'd taken on a monster, one she could neither control nor teach, and one that might present a perpetual danger to the rest of the crew. Before Seven had seemed to turn the corner, for the better, recently, she had had those fears.

She's honest about it all now. Now that there's nothing to lose of course.

And that's her real mistake. Unfortunately, she feels that with growing certainty with each passing hour. Because while there is nothing to lose – there is nothing to gain now. Not anymore. A kneejerk reaction was exactly what she had made. And then guilt, depression had made her stick to it and to hell with all arguments to the contrary.

She wonders if that's why they lost Kes. If…maybe…if they hadn't met 8472 she might not have become so psychically active that she'd had to leave… She wonders, if that had happened, whether Seven would have come aboard at all, and she wonders which she would have preferred. She feels guilty when she can't pinpoint a swift answer–

"Seven is a lot like me, you know."

That came from behind her and not inside her mind. _Right_ behind her. Her eyes snap open, and she whirls, only now aware that she'd stopped pacing.

When he reveals himself, it's a shock. And then it isn't anymore. And it makes sense. Why wouldn't it be him?

"Have you come to gloat?" she asks quietly.

"Hmm." He seems to consider as he observes her cannily, stroking his dark, spotted chin. "Do you think I should?"

"I don't think it matters _what_ you do. You're not really here."

The figure with the orchid yellow pattern on his shoulders smirks. "_I_ know that, Captain. Do you?"

"Of course I know that," she snaps, taking a single step back at his slow, sauntering approach.

He smiles. A disingenuous smile but for the fact that he's here at all. "Then why are you retreating?"

Damn. She stops dead in her backward drifting, lifts her chin. "Because I don't know who…_what_ you are," she grits out. "Where did you come from?"

"Is it that hard to admit you're simply losing it, Captain?"

She blinks. When she opens her eyes, he's still there. He's not moving, not crawling away at perpendicular levels to her line of vision, like the snakes she sometimes sees slithering out of the shower stall from the corner of her eye. She blinks again. He doesn't even blur, and she doesn't know what to make of it. Slowly, she ventures, "I can see you. _Clearly_ see you."

He nods sagely, understanding her, apparently. "You mean I'm not like the other hallucinations?"

"How do you–" She clamps her mouth shut mid-question, her heart rate steadily increasing. This isn't good.

"Know about those?" He seems his usual self. Mild-mannered. But intense. Especially around his great, limpid brown eyes. "I'm from your mind, Captain."

And he looks far too self-satisfied to be imparting that information.

"Then go away," she grits.

"I don't think so. If you didn't want me here, I wouldn't be here."

_I don't want you here, _she thinks furiously, forgetting to say it aloud.

"On the contrary, Kathryn…" He sees her tense. Smiles. It's not the warmest of smiles, either. "Among friends…let's admit facts? Is there any point in 'captain' any longer?"

"No," she admits. Aloud there's a sting to it like no other.

He grins. "I thought not. And see? You _do_ want me here. I'm the only one who will keep you honest."

"Fine. If you're staying, move out of the way."

He frowns at her as she resumes her pacing. When she reenters the flight deck from the cabin, he's gone, and she takes a deep breath in relief–

"No tears for me, Kathryn?"

Damn it. She whirls and he's there again, leaning against the doorframe.

"What?" she snaps out, deeply unnerved and annoyed by it. "What are you talking about?"

He clucks his tongue reproachfully. "Really. You'll shed tears for a fictional dog you had no relationship with…but none for me?"

"I was six." Her words are hoarse, raw as she clips them out. She stops. Swallows, and it softens her voice. "I shed tears for you."

"You _should_ have," he retorts calmly, not in the least bit mollified by the admission.

There's nothing to say to that. She stares at him. At his tufts of sparsely-allotted hair. They'd always made him look the part of a drowned rat, to her way of thinking. It had only made him that much more pathetic, that much more difficult to kill as he stared her down from his seated position on that biobed.

"You should shed more than simple tears. Much more. It's only fair."

"I did." It's so soft, so hoarse again that it's barely audible. If he hears it, he shows no signs of believing her.

He crosses his arms, clearly intending to stay awhile. "So what now?" He looks pointedly to the ceiling. "Is there music?"

She shakes her head. "I can't listen too often. It's a waste of resources."

"But you do. You do listen, Kathryn. Why are you holding out on me? The least you owe me is a bit of music when I want to listen."

She hates this game. And she has played it, too often, before. So what if she's never had a real, physical version of him projected out of her mind to play it with?

She decides to try reason. Treating him politely. Didn't he deserve at least that? "Sometimes…the silence…" she begins, uncharacteristically faltering.

"You hear things," he nods, clasping his hands behind his back. "Things like…" the glimmer in his eyes is borderline malicious "…me."

She swallows. She wants him out of here. "Please leave."

"If I go, others will come. Your mind can't take the solitude anymore. You should have prepared for this better. You should have taken the time to stockpile enough resources to keep your mind entertained."

"I didn't have the time." She heads for her mattress, only has to approach him by two steps or so to slide into the unmade covers, to pull them up under her chin. Maybe he'll leave if she ignores him.

"You're breaking down, you know."

He stands over her. She shuts her eyes. But she still hears him. Still sees him. "You wonder what would happen sometimes. If you tried…things."

"Go away," she whispers.

"When you eat. You stare at the steak knife when you replicate one. You stare at it for hours, sometimes. Because you wonder what would happen if you tried–"

"Stop it!" she glares, eyes snapping open again.

He leans down next to her, the lyrical lilt to his voice almost soothing. "You can do it. If something goes wrong, why…I'll be here to fix you."

"_Stop it!"_

"Or what?" His laughter is soft. Faintly menacing. "You'll kill me…again?"

She sits up abruptly, reels back from him. Steels herself. There's no _guarantee_ he's not some alien presence. There's no guarantee of that at all. She'll defend herself, if need be.

He seems content to kneel on the other side of the mattress. But he stares into her eyes, into her soul. "I think you should have done it to Seven – put her out of her misery. That's what you do to a creature you can't 'fix', isn't it? To one you can't align to your own moral code?"

"That's absurd," she spits, incensed. "And if you're really a part of me you understand why I had to make a choice."

"Oh I understand it. But does that make it any more right?"

Did it ever? "Go away – I'm not doing this."

His soft laughter sends chills up her spine. "Oh no. I don't think so. In fact, I foresee a long night of enlightening conversation ahead of us."

Her hands shake. She presses her eyes shut, starts humming to herself just to tune him out. If he's from her mind – eventually, he has to go away. She just has to be patient.

Right?


	6. Chapter 6

"Do you think they'll have good memories of me? For the most part, I mean?"

He chuckles. It doesn't send chills of unease up her spine any longer. Weeks of living with him have made her…used to his presence. His acerbic humor. "You're asking _me_?"

Oh. Right. She nods. "You were the worst thing I did," she agrees. "The caretaker was second."

She'd made an error in judgment…

He doesn't want to talk about that particular error, however. "I still don't understand," he complains. "You wouldn't kill the Vidiian Neelix's lungs were taken for, even to save his life. Yet I, who had done no harm to come into existence–"

"No." She knows where he's going. They've already had this conversation dozens of times. "You hadn't done _deliberate_ harm. But you came into existence in the first place through a tragic accident that had taken their lives."

"They lived on in me. They both did!" he maintains in that plaintive tone of his that gets under her skin so.

"And that's what I told myself when I made the decision not to order you to go through with the procedure," she monotones.

"Then what changed your mind?"

Kes. But she has never, will never mention the Ocampan's part in her decision. Ever. The choice and responsibility lies entirely with her.

She looks to him. "You wouldn't give up your life for them. That meant you were something more than they were. And also something…" She hesitates.

"Less?" he presses. "Because I had the will to survive at all costs?"

She shrugs. "I knew then that they _weren't_ living on in you. Not really. Neither one of them would have been proud of the being that you were."

"So my life was an appropriate sacrifice to make in exchange for their eternal disappointment. One sentient being…whose murder was like water running off your back–"

"You _know_ it was more than that to me. The fact that you're here at all confirms that well enough," she cuts back with surprising alacrity. It's rare lately.

He smiles faintly, inclines his thoughtful head. Acknowledges wryly, "That's probably true."

He's honest with her, at least. He doesn't lie.

"Two lives outweigh one?" he ponders, staring ahead beside her.

"Something like that," she mutters.

"It's _nothing_ like that," he argues pithily, heating up. "You couldn't choose between two people before and they both died because of it. I was the sacrificial lamb to make up for that previous failure."

"That's not fair." When was the last time she'd showered? She wonders it idly, absently scratching at her bare arms. The tank has seen better days. For some reason she'd stopped washing–

"Isn't it? You intend to maintain that that incident had nothing to do with the choice you made about me in Sickbay?"

"I made the choice before Sickbay," she corrects wearily…then purses her lips. It's good to hash these things out, she thinks. It's good for what's left of her sanity…if done honestly. She lifts her head up from her knees to find his large, golden brown eyes. "Only in the sense that I don't shy away from tough decisions anymore. I don't let myself freeze up under pressure, no matter how intense. And I don't let inaction become my choice of action by default. So yes…you're right in one sense. But only to say that if I hadn't had that experience…I might not have been strong enough to make the decision to send you back through that transporter beam."

"You make it sound so clinical," he observes bitterly.

"What would you have me do? I had two men whose lives would be restored by reversing an accident."

"The good of the many?" he spits.

She nods vaguely. In grudging agreement. "The good of the many."

His lip curls up. "You have no idea how much I dislike the Vulcan side of myself."

"It was clear you tended more towards Neelix's style."

"Is that why you killed me? Because you thought I should have been more like Tuvok?"

She blows frustrated air out through her clenched teeth. Shoots him a look. "Next topic."

She only has to have this part of the conversation with him sometimes. Other times, he's good for a sounding board. She rather likes that part of him.

"Do you think I would have recovered? From my…funk or whatever it was?"

"Your _depression_?" he needles. Shrugs. "Possibly." He stares her down. "Of course there's every chance you would have steadily declined. It's just as likely you'd have worsened…until they saw some…not-so-attractive parts of you."

Like he had. She doesn't know why but a full body shudder wracks her at that thought. "It's something like that I was afraid of."

"I know."

Of course he does.

"Do you think he forgives me?" They both know who she means. "Do you think he ever will?"

"For abandoning him?"

"For…not…"

They both know what she means. Evenly, he challenges, "You tell me."

She thinks a minute. Decides, "He'll forgive me. He always does."

"Did. He always _did_. You never left him to captain the ship while you disappeared from his life before."

That's true. Silence overtakes them until the next valid thought hits her. "He'll do a better job, I think. Than I would have."

He raises a bushy, hybrid brow. "You don't know that."

"No. No, I don't." She tenses, her stomach churning. Blearily, she glances down at it from between her knees. "Next topic. When was the last time I ate?"

"How do I know?"

Yes he has the same sense of time that she does – unfortunately.

"You could ask the invisible woman," he suggests disinterestedly.

"The computer." She frowns, resting her chin on her knees. "I don't like it. She's against us."

"She didn't warn us before the Borg attacked us."

"No. She didn't."

They both know the Borg tried to use invisible sonic waves to assimilate them several months ago. Maybe one month ago. Three? She frowns. Maybe a few weeks ago. Whenever it had been, they both spontaneously sprouted Borg organelles on their hands and faces before realizing what must be happening. Fortunately, Kathryn was still together enough to have reasoned out the issue; he, of course, was no real help.

She'd erected a dampening field around the shuttle, has kept it up, and that has protected them from similar attacks. So far, there have been no other major battles. Fortunately.

"They must have compromised the computer somehow," she muses vaguely, for there had been no warnings before the incident, and sensors had refused to reveal the Malon and Borg ships she'd known were shadowing her shuttle.

Now, she no longer trusts the circuitry, has muted all audio warnings from the computer. She doesn't like that intrusive, too loud voice any more. The only one she's comfortable with is his.

When he sits next to her on her beaten mattress, which serves the function of bed, recliner, and table now, she no longer tenses. It's normal.

"Do you think I'll see them again?"

"Voyager? Or home?"

"They're synonymous…" She frowns. "Aren't they?"

He nods. "Yes. You should have paid stronger heed to that concept before abandoning them."

He's right. She knows he is. She doesn't have to admit it to him. She just knows that if she ever sees Chakotay again, she'll tell him. Him, she'll admit it to. How wrong she was.

Her stomach churns. She glances down at it, surprised. Asks dully, "When was the last time I ate?"

He shrugs. "Might've been this morning."

Hmm… better to wait. "Have to save rations," she reminds them.

He nods. Unconcerned.

She wonders, "Do you think he forgives me?"

They both know who she means…


	7. Chapter 7

She can sleep again, which is good. Lately, she hovers in between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes the Malon attack with the Borg. Sometimes it's in her dreams. Mostly, it's in her dreams. But now she dreams largely of this shuttle, of the same four walls she typically stares at all day long. She avoids the rear cabin almost entirely.

She turns over on her mattress, half awake, half asleep. When she gets up – not yet but when she feels up to it – she should check the dampening field, make sure it's still up. If it falls, if the computer is collaborating to take it down when she isn't paying attention, the Borg could always–

A shrill triple beep sounds. Her heart hammers inside of her chest, the unexpected trilling like a physical blow. She's thrown into brief paralysis. The faint echo of voices sounds in the distance, through the roaring of blood in her ears. Familiar voices.

"…aneway."

"…vok… …tain Jane…"

Eyes wide, jaw agape, she bolts upright on her mattress. The voices stop as the blood rushes from her head. She looks around her, her vision swimming. Where had they been coming from? She'd been asleep…hadn't she? The beep sounds again. Insistent. Okay, she hadn't dreamed that.

_That beep._ It means something. Something bad, maybe. Her instinct tells her it is, even if she can't quite remember why.

It sounds again.

"…vok…Captain…way."

Her eyes go wide. That, she had not imagined this time. And she's definitely awake.

"…athryn, we're on our…"

"…'re coming for you. Do you read…?"

What is it? What in the hell… Her heart hammers. Skips and jumps. It _can't_ be.

She listens hard, her ears straining through the too loud silence. How…? Where can it be coming from?

"thryn we're…oming back…"

"Do you read…"

Her thoughts feel murky. Like she's underwater. Ice, probably. It's always ice, isn't it? She shakes her head to clear it. Tries to reason her way through this. Those are voices she shouldn't be hearing. But she is. They keep sounding. Fragments, snippets, and crackling. Is it possible…?

Answers have to be found. She has to verify…

_In the sensor grid._ That's where she'll look. It's been so long since she checked those. Those are…on the left. Right. She sinks into the chair. The number seventy-four flashes in front of her. It's all she needs to see.

Suddenly, she knows what that sound is, that shrill triple beep. The sounds of those voices. She knows exactly what it is. _Who_ it is. Rising slowly from the pilot's seat, she stumbles forward in a daze of disbelief. Sinks back down onto her mattress. The comm. system is damaged; they took heavy damage in that last battle with the Malon cruiser. The cruiser that had aligned with the Borg, had tried to take her out by innovative assimilation.

Her heart soars as the disbelief slowly recedes. It's true.

_Voyager_. Voyager is _here!_

They've come back for her.

She can't pretend anger, even a sense of wasted sacrifice. She's _glad_. So glad, because now she knows, doesn't she? She'd only wanted to tell him how she knows. She knows what he, they had wanted her to see now.

There are some things in this galaxy worth dying for, yes. She's always been able to find those. She's occasionally mistaken pride, grief for those other things: things nobler, far nobler than her reasons really are. The thing she was having trouble with before she'd left was recognizing that there are some things worth living for.

Voyager, her crew…her _family_ is the latter. She'll never forget that again, and once Chakotay knows that, once he's in front of her again and she can tell him – show him – what she's learned, promise to never forget it again…

He won't be angry with her. He can't. He loves her. He'll forgive her.

He always does.

A bright smile lighting, she brings the shuttle to a dead halt, dismantling the warp bubble around it. They're headed straight for her. She has only to wait a few days and they'll be here.

There would have been time lost if they'd doubled back for her. A great deal of time. They'll make up for it. No more sight-seeing – at least less. It will be different now. They'll see. It will all be different. She'll show them.

She feels her companion's reproving gaze on her, but not even that dampens her spirits. "Sorry, my friend," she murmurs softly to him. "But our time here is almost at an end."

She glances over at him. Curious. She's been expecting him to tell her she's hallucinating, that she doesn't even know what she's reading anymore – as if she'd ever mistake that signature.

He reclines in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. Scowls. It's the first scowl she's seen on his face since he's been here. Sharing this room with her. She's always aware of him but for a moment…for a moment, she'd forgotten him.

"You don't sound sorry," is his only contribution. "You never really did, you know."

"I've paid my dues to you."

He scoffs. "As if your debt could ever be repaid…_Kathryn_."

Her lips purse. They haven't done that in so long it almost hurts. "Maybe not. But I've paid all I'm prepared to."

The thought of Voyager, of home approaching is enough to make her almost giddy. Brave. She's more herself than she has been in…years. There's a glint in her eye now. One if she could see would be the only familiar thing in her expression, which has slackened unnaturally over time.

"You've tortured me for months," she snaps out, meeting those eerie, piercing globes of brown.

He inclines his bulbous head once. "True. At least the ending you gave me was swift. It was…painless. You haven't been as kind to yourself. I will give you that."

He's always honest with her. That at least, she appreciates. He has never pretended to be her friend. The way she tried to, briefly, in the days before she'd made her final decision regarding his fate. Her final action…

"What will you do?" she asks him seriously.

"Do?" His mild demeanor has driven her mad for months, and now would be no exception…if not for the arrival of her ship. This time, when he shrugs unaffectedly, it only makes her…sad. "I'm a specter. A figment of your imagination."

She ponders this. "So when I leave…you'll just…disappear?"

"Like Fear," he finishes for her. He smiles, and she always saw more of Neelix in his smiles than anything.

Her heart pangs at the thought of seeing _him_ again, and the guilt is incredible.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" the man in the orchid-print yellow uniform smirks. "If I just…disappeared again?"

That she would. What kind of a person does that make her?

He's angry, but she can't entirely blame him. She looks uselessly around them, wondering if he'll stay here now…if he can exist without her or if her leaving is really going to be like–

The place is a disaster. In bewilderment, she blinks rapidly, only now focusing on her surroundings. Forgetting he's even asked her a question at all.

"We have to clean up," she declares, her eyes widening in alarm.

"Can't have the crew seeing what an Aldorian pig you've made of yourself, can we?" he smirks.

She glares at him. "Are you going to help, or just stand there and supervise?"

He shrugs. Retreats into the rear cabin while she stares blankly after him. He'll torture her more when she makes it back there. That's the drill.

She needs a sonic in the worst way. She can't remember the last time she showered. Her lank hair as she moves this way and that, catching glimpses, feels of it brushing her bare shoulders amazes her. She can't _believe_ she fell so far into her funk that she let herself go this badly. What kind of a Starfleet officer…?

The crew can't see her like this. Seven can't see her like this – _he_ can't see her like this.

Her skin burns hot, and as she moves, bending and lifting, straightening and cleaning, she recognizes her thirst. Yet she's oddly cold. She's not looking forward to facing Justin and Daddy, who live in the rear cabin. She rarely sees them, the way she does her cabin companion, but they're always there. They make the temperature back there absolutely frigid, in spite of the warm temperature she keeps to minimize the drain on resources. She knows why they do it, too.

What will happen to them when she leaves for Voyager? When the shuttle sits in the bay again, no longer permanently inhabited? Her conscience prickles her sharply. It'll be almost like abandoning them again. Like…

No. It isn't. It's not same – it doesn't matter. She's going home. They're coming for her. They need her. They always did.

She works frantically to clean her own mess, months in the making, her mind racing with giddy observations. Not every story has a happy ending, no. But hers does. And Voyager's will. She can see to that now – personally. Chakotay has made sure that she can.

_She's going home. _


	8. Chapter 8

_**Epilogue**_

**

* * *

**

**

* * *

**

He wonders where she is. What she's doing. At warp four, by now, she should just be passing the halfway mark out of that forsaken, spiritless expanse.

He wonders if she did it with her sanity intact. Considering the effects of solitary confinement, the net sum of what she'd subjected herself to by disappearing alone in a class two shuttle for nearly four years, the doctor doesn't think so…but he prefers to have faith.

She's always in the back of his mind, living in his thoughts. Yet the date makes thoughts of her even more poignant today; he knows it as he sits motionless in the reading chair that had once been hers.

There's still the chance she can catch them. If she maintained herself, if she planned well enough, she could have come through it. It wasn't necessarily a permanent goodbye. That is what he tells the crew, reminds them of constantly when they clamor at him, still, that they've abandoned her. He tells them to have faith in her, because going back for her is impossible at this point…and with the burden of the wellbeing of the entire ship on his shoulders now, he can't give the order to double back for her. He simply can't, which makes their only remaining option to believe in her super-human ability to accomplish things most people can't. That is what he tells himself, and to hell with sharp, niggling doubts to the contrary.

In some ways, she's more daring than he is. She always was. That could be called recklessness, any number of things. He calls it daring, admirable innovation. She might take chances, especially with only herself to worry about, that he can't.

They've just passed the Devore expanse. He regrets he couldn't negotiate passage through it, but he believes it was the wisest course of action to bypass it, considering. He thinks she might've chanced it. Possibly, she'd have talked her way into crossing it but with three telepathic passengers…he'd taken the initial refusal at face value, ordered Tom to circumvent the entire vast territory. The borders are unstable, and they've been in several skirmishes with small warring factions for the past year and a half. They've lost three people, but he still firmly believes it was best to avoid the Devore, not to try and smuggle telepaths into their violently xenophobic space.

But her alone…

_Maybe_. It's possible. If she could get passage through the Imperium, she could go a ways toward catching up to them. He clings to that, even as he clings to the cover of Dante in his whitening fingers.

He's moved into the captain's quarters, but he hasn't packed all of her things. Many of them, yes. Protocol, propriety has demanded that he clear out many of her belongings to make room for his own. But some things he hasn't been able to bear to pack away and let gather dust in some hidden corner of a cargo bay. Doing that with _everything_ would be an admission he isn't prepared to make.

Not yet.

His first captain's log had nearly made him vomit. Moving here…about the same. Yet, guilty as he feels for living here, a selfish part of him is now glad he does. This is where he feels her presence most strongly. Occasionally, he thinks he catches a hint of her scent, the ghost of that half smile. Here, he can hear her voice most clearly as she argues with him. Teases him. Tells him to have faith.

"I have it, Kathryn," he tells her softly as he stares out at the viewport, scanning the stars for things he knows he might not ever see. Like her shuttle, pulling up alongside them, preceding a triumphant hail announced in Harry's eager voice.

He's taken it hard, her decision and subsequent, abrupt disappearance from their lives. They all have. He fights the tendency for bitterness over her choice, her unthinkable actions, to form in the rest of them. He fights it in himself. That he'll fight to the day he dies. For her sake, he will.

Does he forgive her? He isn't sure. He knows he misses her, with a keen pain that cuts as deep as any loss he's ever experienced. At the time, he'd never been _so_ angry at any one living being before. For weeks afterward, he'd seen red. He'd been terrified. Yet the only way to get back to her, with that vortex imploded, was to circle all the way back through the expanse. With her presumably setting course _through_ it…they'd have missed each other entirely. And even if they hadn't…Voyager was capable of stockpiling the resources to cross the expanse _once_…not twice, to double back through it once reaching the other side. He couldn't do it. And she wouldn't have come out on the same side as they had, either, quite possibly.

They'd lingered a few months anyway. Tried to come up with ways to wait for her, to stay back until she could catch them. Conflict with the region's ruling forces had made it impossible. They'd been forced to move forward, to keep going. Not knowing if she would make it through, much less be able to catch up to them.

He glances down at the coffee table that sees more tea nowadays than coffee, at the holo-reading of a depressing book he'd never read until he'd found it locked in her desk over a year ago. Why a dog-lover of any century would have it, he wouldn't have understood if it hadn't been for the inscription over the casing, signed "Mom". According to the lettering, it seemed to have been her father's. Which meant it was now one of her most treasured possessions and made sense. It had been a hell of a tear-jerking story, one he hadn't appreciated initially. Now, with time, he thinks he might.

He thinks of happy endings. Of whether Voyager will see one without her. Of whether there's a chance she can still find hers or if her decision had made their finding one together, the way he'd always hoped they might, impossible now. He thinks how the book would be so radically different if written in their century…of how the only real difference between tragedy and comedy is timing.

_Timing_. If they somehow, some _way_, manage to get theirs down perfectly, even at this distance…

He prefers to have faith. She's going to come home to them. It may take a few years for her to catch up, but she's going to come home.

He has to believe she will. He has to believe that this time, there's a happy ending to their story. Because if he doesn't…then, there's nothing left to hold onto but the book cutting painful ridges into his palm as he fruitlessly searches the stars streaming by outside the viewport for any sign of her.

Kathryn always manages to pull off the impossible. She will this time too. He's sure of it. Their story, Voyager's story was destined from the outset to end happily, and it will.

It has to.


End file.
